Downloadable Uyghur Textbook, w/ Audio

[Khotan]

I'm not sure if this is the right part of the forum to post this in, but for those interesting in learning Uyghur, the University of Kansas has just put up for free download an excellent Uyghur textbook, with audio to accompany, at the following website:

http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/5624

I've just started to go through it, and so far have found a couple of minor typos, but overall think it's an excellent and very sophisticated introduction to the language.

[trien27]

This is probably not the right place: Uyghur is NOT a Chinese dialect.

[trien27]

you might want to put your question here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=26

[Pravit]

Khotan, just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I traveled to Xinjiang in '07 and bought a few Chinese-language Uyghur textbooks, but found only phrasebook type books and nothing with more of a structured approach - and believe me, I was hitting up the Xinhua bookstore in every town I passed through, even the humongous multi-floor one in Urumqi.

I ended up learning Turkish later on which I found to have quite a few similarities with Uyghur despite the huge distance that separates the two regions. This book is pretty much exactly what I was looking for - thanks!

[Meng Lelan]

Thanks also from me. I think it's always nice to be able to know the language of some region in China that is particular to that region. I'm not even sure that Uyghur is taught in any university in the United States either so thanks again for posting.

[Khotan]

Thanks for the comments; I'm glad that people have found the book useful, because I've been impressed with it. (I realize, for the record, that Uyghur isn't a "Chinese dialect", but since it's a "language of China", I figured this might be the appropriate forum to post the news in.)

As for US universities teaching Uyghur. Indiana University offers a three-year series of courses in it, along with various other Central Asian languages, including Mongolian and Tibetan. I'm pretty sure that the University of Washington and the University of Kansas teach it as well.

As for Uyghur books in China, there was one published a couple of years ago entitled "Introduction to Modern Uighur", by Hamit Zakir, published in Xinjiang in 2007, but it appears to be unavailable these days. I've been looking for a copy for some time, but have had no luck finding it. (Having never seen it, I don't know how it might compare to the book cited above.)

For people knowing Japanese, another Uyghur textbook can be downloaded from this page:

http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/project/aa03_gengo_text_j.html

[chrix]

Thanks for the link, very interesting, it also has nice stuff on Malay and Mongolian

[Khotan]

A corrected and updated version of the Uyghur textbook has now been made available, and can be downloaded at the following URL:

http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/5624/7/EngYakDwy2010_Uyg1full_11.pdf

The audio can be found here:

http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/5624/8/EngYakDwy2009_Uyg1audio_10.html

[Caidanbi]

This website is a great resource for free books and audio in so many languages! Including Uyghur and Chinese. I've linked it to the Uyghur page for you, though ^-^ http://www.uz-translations.net/?category=uighur

You have to sign in to download anything, but it's free and they don't ask for much info. It's well worth it, I've downloaded tons of stuff from this site!

[daofeishi]

I'm not even sure that Uyghur is taught in any university in the United States either so thanks again for posting.

It is. Uighur is taught at Harvard by Prof. Mark C. Elliott, and he runs courses ranging from elementary to advanced readings from native sources.